This strikes me as the downside of 'Big Picture' logic, as it's frequently the lame assed excuse reason given for this type of nonsense. The speaker is generally smugly sure of their eruditely pinnacle as they explain to the listener that they simply don't understand the 'Big Picture'.

In reality when you zoom out to see said 'Big Picture' the actually relevant fact and details are so minuscule-ly obscured...that the only thing you really have a clear view of is who's political ass appears to be the most tasty.

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On a side note: Your level of detailed insight on this stuff is truly frightening at time.

Refusing to send Snowden back to the U.S. could cost Putin diplomatically. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry lashed out at Moscow for giving Snowden a safe stopover en route — according to several reports — to Ecuador, where he has requested asylum. Putin, however, has several reasons to thumb his nose at the U.S.

The reason Putin gave publicly was that Snowden had committed no crime since arriving in Russia on a flight from Hong Kong. "We can only send back some foreign nationals to the countries with which we have the relevant international agreements on extradition," Putin said. "With the United States we have no such agreement."

The Russian leader probably has other motives, too. But Andrew Ryvkin at Britain's Guardian says that the most obvious one — picking Snowden's brains for intelligence secrets — is not why Putin is holding out. After all, Ryvkin says, Moscow has its own "(albeit weaker) NSA with spies, satellites, cryptography specialists, and a general understanding of an intelligence agency's modus operandi that is far beyond that of any journalist or civilian in the U.S." What it does not have, he adds, is an abundance of opportunities to stick its finger in the American government's eye.

President Obama "not going to be scrambling jets to get Snowden"---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

President Barack Obama has said there will be no "wheeling and dealing" as part of extradition efforts against US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

Speaking on a visit to the West African nation of Senegal, Mr Obama also said the case would be dealt with through routine legal channels.

"I am not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker," he added.

Mr Snowden, who faces espionage charges, flew to Moscow last weekend and requested asylum in Ecuador.

Mr Obama said on Thursday that he had not called China and Russia's presidents about the case, adding: "I shouldn't have to."

He told a news conference in the Senegalese capital Dakar: "I'm not going to have one case of a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues."

...U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would lead the effort to block renewal of trade preferences for Ecuador if it granted Snowden asylum. The Andean nation has been lobbying the U.S. congress to renew the preferences, known as ATPDEA, which are due to expire next month.

“Our government will not reward countries for bad behavior,” Menendez said yesterday in a statement. “If Snowden is granted asylum in Ecuador, I will lead the effort to prevent the renewal of Ecuador’s duty-free access under GSP and will also make sure there is no chance for renewal of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act. Trade preferences are a privilege granted to nations, not a right.”

Ecuador would lose at least 40,000 jobs if the trade preferences aren’t renewed, the nation’s Ambassador to the U.S. Nathalie Cely said last year. While most of the $1.01 billion in exports to the U.S. in April were oil, shipments also included more labor intensive products such as cut flowers, broccoli and shrimp. Exports fell from $1.14 billion in April 2012, according to U.S. Census data.

Because his very existence tasks them. He's an ongoing embarassment, the Streisand Effect is in full swing, and there are those who think they can ultimately either finesse this - or be so outrageously capricious and above the law with what they do to him that he'll emerge as:

The Terrible Example of What Could Happen to You 'Dear Child' If You So Much As Think of Crossing Us.

I think it's a little to late for a 'win' even if they do go to that extreme.

And they probably will.

The US concentration camp in Cuba is still there despite its near universal condemnation - both at home and abroad - to say nothing of it being in complete violation of just about every law you can think of.

The Administration doesn't care what anybody thinks - or what the law says.

They've sat down, debated, and wrote a little memo that established (to their own satisfaction) that they have the legal and moral authority to do what they're doing. And no...you can't read it either.

I'm ashamed to say that Menendez, the guy trying to blackmail Ecuador, is my ass of a senator.

For the American people, this is also adding insult to injury. This punishment doesn't only hit the Ecuadorian people, it also hits Americans. Not only are we being spied on, but in the government's fight for its authority to spy, it's also now forbidding Americans from purchasing products that they want (or forcing us to pay higher prices).

Menendez either (a) doesn't understand economics well enough to understand that in trade both sides profit; or (b) really does view this as a war of the US government against the American people. Personally, I think it's likely that both are true.

I'll be writing him another letter, this time saying not only that isn't PRISM and other domestic spying unacceptable, but that the necessary remedy is, at a minimum, the repeal of USA PATRIOT and of the AUMF.

I'll be writing him another letter, this time saying not only that isn't PRISM and other domestic spying unacceptable, but that the necessary remedy is, at a minimum, the repeal of USA PATRIOT and of the AUMF.

He has to be very careful where he goes. Iceland got grumpy last month, Ecuador was on lead but they just got grumpy too this week. He needs to go somewhere where the US can't go all 800lb gorilla on them. This guy basically is up in the top 10 most wanted.

But notice how much trouble they're having? Whereas they got a bunch of the lulzsec type guys kinda quick? He's getting some high grade help in a few places.

The next move is very important. He's right now in a limbo sort of state as Russia won't go after him. The next place might not be so forgiving. This isn't the first time this has happened, i.e. political refugee stuck in an airport.

The next move is very important. He's right now in a limbo sort of state as Russia won't go after him. The next place might not be so forgiving. This isn't the first time this has happened, i.e. political refugee stuck in an airport.

However, the longer he is 'stuck' in a diplomatic impasse, while still remaining in full public view, the safer he is.

He was also allegedly smart enough to set himself up with some "insurance" according to this article:

...Edward Snowden suggested Monday that he believes the federal government wants to either jail or murder him.

"How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?" a questioner asked Greenwald in a livechat on the website of The Guardian, to whom Snowden has provided some of the documents.

Here is his answer:

"All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."

The lack of shadows and fog severely limits what the US can do right now. It pretty much forces the US to keep all its actions mostly legal and above board. That's a brightly lit environment not conducive for the shenanigans of most covert and intelligence agencies.

There's already evidence of some advanced damage control when the president recently downplayedthe significance of the entire affair by clearly indicating he felt it a purely criminal justice issue. And one not worthy of "escalation," or having chiefs of state "wheeling and dealing" or making direct phone calls over. Which is a standard strategy to play ("Yeah. So it happened. It's really not that big deal. We'll deal with it.") when you're currently looking like a fool who got caught completely by surprise.

^ Truthfully, that was what I expected from the beginning. But they didn't play the card early enough. You have limited time in order to spin and for it not to seem like a cover-up, and they missed that window with the shield and spear clattering. Without operational knowledge on the line, and the documents already in the wind, they should have immediately changed tacks.

There's also this little fly in the ointment concerning Ecuador as reported this morning over at TechDirt. (Link here.)

Ecuador Using Copyright To Try To Take Down Leaked Documents About Its Surveillance Practicesfrom the copyright-as-censorship dept

While Ecuador has received plenty of attention for granting asylum to Julian Assange and being one possible landing place for Ed Snowden, it's no secret that the country is not exactly known as a bastion of civil liberties protection. In fact, last year, just as it was granting Julian Assange asylum, there were reports coming out about highly questionable activities by the Ecuador government in extraditing someone who had exposed corruption. In that post, it was noted that Ecuardor scrapped its own rules requiring a warrant to investigate someone's IP address and has been known to seize the computers of critical journalists.

So, it should come as little surprise that while so much attention is on Ecuador, it was leaked to Buzzfeed that the country is in the middle of purchasing equipment for widespread surveillance, including a system called "GSM Interceptor" (subtle!) and some unmanned surveillance drones. Basically, the country does not have a great record on protecting civil liberties or freedom of the press.

In the immortal words of Hagbard Celine: There are no honest men aboard for this trip.

If we consider just *how amazingly many* countries are out there, the same 20 keep showing up making news in these kinds of "modern topics", and 10 of them are West European. So I really hadn't even thought about Ecuador until these two news items. I haven't heard much of *any* of the South American countries. Are they all that poor as to be irrelevant? Or is it a subtle news source bias?

The service Mr. Snowden needs is in some ways pretty low-tech: "Hi, I want to hang out in a two-room unit of your embassy and not die or get sent back. Please give me a ham sandwich twice a day too."

But my guess is so many of those countries are so poor that one good knock on the door will make them buckle over something like this!

The next move is very important. He's right now in a limbo sort of state as Russia won't go after him. The next place might not be so forgiving. This isn't the first time this has happened, i.e. political refugee stuck in an airport.